Leading people and leading by controlling people are not the same thing.

Many leaders, especially in the beginning, confuse the two. They believe that more control leads to better results, fewer mistakes, and greater order.

Sometimes it works in the short term. But over time, excessive control slowly starts damaging people, relationships, and eventually even results. Leadership is not about creating dependence. Leadership is about creating people who eventually no longer need constant supervision.

Why Control Slowly Destroys People

Most people naturally feel a need to be seen, recognized, and to feel important in the role they have in this world.

If someone constantly controls them, constantly corrects every little thing, tells them how to do everything, and interferes with every step, it becomes almost impossible to live in such an environment in the long term.

I remember when I worked as a detective in economic crime investigations and had a superior who literally corrected commas in my reports.

At that time, I was around thirty years old and already had almost ten years of work experience, leadership experience, and operational experience within the police.

And then someone starts correcting commas and restructuring sentences simply because they personally dislike them, or even had an issue with me.

For me, that was not only humiliating.

It was also deeply discouraging.

I found it very difficult to work in that environment, especially because I felt intellectually stronger than he was.

And over time, I slowly lost respect for him because I had the feeling that he was doing it to demonstrate power over me, power that in reality he did not naturally possess.

The problem was that I had a higher formal education than he did. I had completed my studies at Law University, which, even today, is considered a respected educational path. He had completed a professional criminal investigation school, which was perfectly fine and respectable in itself, but it was on a different academic level. And later I finished my master's, and then you can imagine how that affected his position.

And I think that was where the main collision happened.

His intellectual insecurity collided with my intellectual ego.

I will not lie, I had ego issues there, too.

I was fighting on an intellectual and operational level, while he was fighting through hierarchy and positional authority.

To be fair, he was actually a very good man.

Kind-hearted.

Pleasant to talk to.

There was never shouting, insulting, or anything similar.

But there was always this feeling underneath, this energy of the superior and the subordinate.

Leading by controlling because of low self-confidence

Because I think he was not fully confident in his role, he unconsciously tried to create confidence through control.

By controlling my writing, my commas, and my wording, he was trying to create authority that leadership itself was not naturally giving him.

And that becomes a problem.

Because people like me and some of my colleagues at that point already needed very little supervision or control. We knew our work very well.

Controlling people like that becomes exhausting for the leader.

And even more importantly, it becomes extremely damaging for the person being controlled.

Control Kills Ownership

One of the biggest mistakes leaders make is believing that more control automatically creates better results.

In the beginning, excessive control can even appear effective. Mistakes decrease, things become more organized, and people follow instructions more precisely.

The problem starts later.

People slowly stop thinking for themselves.

Instead of asking, "What is the best solution?" they begin asking, "What does my boss want me to do?"

What does He or she want me to do?

And that is the wrong question to ask.

Paralyzes by control

We had a secretary shortly after I became an assistant unit leader, which was my second leadership position in the police.

There was a woman in her fifties who did not have much experience with certain police databases that had already become computerized at the time. She was not comfortable with computers, and I remember very clearly that she often called me for help because she knew I would help her, and she felt comfortable around me.

She did not want to ask our main supervisor because she was afraid of him.

I was younger than her, but we had a good relationship, and she felt safe asking me questions. Naturally, this strengthened our relationship quite a lot.

On the other hand, her previous experiences had apparently damaged her confidence so much that she would often call me even for very simple things.

I remember many times walking into her office and telling her which keys to press on the computer. I clearly remember that she would often hold her finger above the “Enter” key, the key that confirmed what we were doing.

I have to point out that these were important actions because they affected traffic violation records at official databases. Mistakes could potentially have consequences for people.

But she was simply afraid to press Enter.

She would keep her finger above the key for thirty seconds or even more, asking me if it was okay, if I had checked everything, and looking at me for reassurance.

I remember saying three or four times:

"Press it."

Sometimes I even joked:

"Come on, just hit that Enter button."

This is a typical example of someone who gradually lost confidence and became dependent on control.

Because excessive control can eventually paralyze people and erode their creativity and self-trust.

Or, even worse, people are asking their bosses for everything because they fear making mistakes. They lose self–confidence instead of gaining it over time.

Then, bosses are mad because they call them for every little thing. But in reality, they created that.

Fear of making mistakes

As a result, people gradually begin to fear making mistakes, and the more they fear them, the deeper these patterns become.

And once that starts, several things begin to unfold. It becomes more than just a basic confidence problem.

Creativity drops.

Initiative disappears.

Responsibility slowly shifts upward.

Eventually, the leader becomes the center of every decision, every problem, and every question.

And that creates two problems at once.

The leader becomes overloaded.

The people around the leader become dependent on the leader.

Leadership should create stronger people, not people who become incapable of functioning without constant direction.

Why does control slowly destroy people?

As a result, control slowly begins to damage people and their confidence.

If this goes on for years or even decades, people should not be surprised when they eventually see employees who have almost no confidence left in themselves.

And this does not necessarily appear immediately.

Sometimes it happens to highly committed people who work extremely hard and consistently do their best. On the outside, they may still look productive and responsible. But underneath, their ability to work independently and use their own creativity slowly disappears.

The reality is that such a person also carries some responsibility for allowing this situation to continue.

Perhaps they should have resisted earlier, set boundaries, or eventually changed jobs.

At the same time, I would be careful not to judge these people.

We do not know their stories.

We do not know why they stayed.

We do not know what circumstances forced them to continue working in an unhealthy environment.

Why My Friend Couldn't Leave Her Former Boss

I remember one friend of mine whom I originally met through work during my years as an attorney.

At that time, I worked with many companies, and she represented one of them. Over the years, she gradually became the director's right hand, handling many important matters for him, especially legal matters that I worked on that were often sensitive.

One thing I noticed very quickly was that even though they had a good relationship, she was very afraid of him.

He had a somewhat choleric personality and was an extremely successful businessman. The company's revenue was measured in tens of millions, and profits in millions.

She was responsible for accounting and human resources and held an informal leadership position within the company, but it was always tightly controlled by him.

As we became friends, she slowly started sharing these things with me.

I remember watching her gradually burn out from the constant fear of making mistakes.

What made the situation even more difficult was that she was an extremely precise person with a photographic memory and an unusual ability to complete enormous amounts of work in a very short time.

But instead of protecting her from overload, her director, consciously or unconsciously, kept using these strengths by giving her even more responsibilities.

Eventually, she was handling accounting, human resources, legal matters, customer care, and many other things.

At some point, everything was on her shoulders.

I remember her telling me that she simply could not continue anymore and had started looking for another job.

But she always felt trapped because she had a very good salary, and the director also rewarded her with excellent bonuses.

He valued her work.

But his need to control everything inside the company was slowly destroying her psychologically.

As far as I remember, it took her somewhere between five and ten years before she seriously started thinking about leaving and eventually made that decision.

Ironically, she actually loved the work itself.

The job content was good.

The salary was excellent.

But eventually, she left only because of the controlling relationship with the director.

She later changed jobs two or three times because none of them matched her previous one financially or professionally.

But she had to make that step.

Because otherwise, I truly believe that psychologically, it would have destroyed her.

And honestly, I think she had already reached burnout, or was extremely close to it.

Trust vs control in leadership

A leader first needs to be honest with themselves.

They need to decide whether they want to lead based on trust in people and trust that they will make mistakes and learn from them, or lead through control, where there may appear to be fewer mistakes, but both the leader and the people around them become significantly more burdened.

From this perspective, trust versus control becomes extremely important. These two forces should ideally work together, but very often they end up working against each other.

In ideal leadership, a leader would have a high level of trust while still maintaining a healthy balance of supervision, guidance, and support.

My team, my rules (my control)

I remember when I started working as an attorney and slowly began building my own team.

At the beginning, I was very much on the side of control and hierarchy.

Everything had to go through me.

I wanted every thought, every process, and every work system to be followed exactly as I imagined.

Some people adapted to that very well.

Others did not.

And the people who could not function in that environment eventually left.

Over time, mainly because it became too exhausting to control everything, I was almost forced into letting go.

I slowly started trusting people more.

And slowly, I started reducing control.

Why leaders struggle to let go

It is extremely difficult for leaders to let go, especially if they started as a founder or a one-man band, and the business feels like their own child.

I definitely always felt that way about my business.

For a very long time, it felt like my little child.

And because of that, it took me a long time to let go, to relinquish control, and to trust other people and let them develop their own potential.

It is difficult because, for a long time, results depended almost entirely on you.

And one thing has to be understood.

The objective responsibility of a leader always exists.

It is very difficult to look at a client or your superior and say:

"We made a mistake here."

Especially when you know that you personally did not make it.

During my legal career, we occasionally lost cases because of mistakes made by employees, secretaries, or other colleagues. Fortunately, these situations were extremely rare over twenty years.

But they happened.

And when I had enough experience and confidence as a leader, I simply approached people and said:

"This happened. We made a mistake here. Now the only question is how we solve it."

Three major mistakes in my career as an attorney

Believe it or not, I think I had three serious situations in my career.

Twice, a secretary was responsible, and once another attorney was working with me.

In every single situation, I approached the client completely openly and honestly.

There was financial damage, and any one of those clients could have filed a complaint or even taken legal action.

One case involved a former police colleague of mine who lost a significant compensation claim after a traffic accident because we failed to file a lawsuit on time.

The documents had simply been misplaced, and the secretary forgot to send them, even though everything was prepared and practically ready to go.

I cannot describe how difficult it was for me to tell him.

I remember seeing the disappointment and pain in his face.

I apologized openly and explained his options.

I told him:

"You can seek compensation through my insurance, we can find a solution, we can discuss whatever you think is fair."

And his answer surprised me.

He said:

"It happened. There is nothing we can do. I do not want you paying me for this."

I then at least insisted on paying the court fee he had already paid, which was several hundred dollars, because I knew his police salary was not very high.

So at least I covered that cost.

He did not receive the compensation he deserved.

And even today, I still feel bad for him.

The second and third situations were similar.

And what surprised me most was this.

Because we approached those situations with honesty, none of those clients reported us, demanded compensation, or left us.

They all accepted our apology and even remained clients afterward.

Maybe we were lucky.

But our approach was always honest.

And I still believe that good usually returns good.

Ironically, we had far more problems with clients where we did absolutely everything right, and they still ended up unhappy.

That happens in every business.

Which is exactly why letting go becomes so difficult.

Because deep down, no leader wants to be responsible for someone else's mistake.

Delegation is not abandonment

When you start letting go and releasing control, there will often be a feeling of abandonment.

Both for you and for the people you lead.

Very often a vacuum appears inside the delegation process because before, the person constantly received instructions, sub-instructions, and micro-instructions through micromanagement. Suddenly that structure disappears and the person finds themselves in a space where they now need to make decisions independently.

And this transition can be long.

Especially if this is happening inside an organization where this type of culture has never existed before. Even in established organizations, people need time to adapt to a different way of working.

People need to understand one important thing:

Build trust

At this point, you are actually showing a higher level of trust in them, which is a huge compliment.

Of course, it also comes with greater responsibility, which in the long run is positive for them.

If an employee makes a mistake, they should ideally first attempt to resolve it themselves.

The first reaction should not be running to the leader asking for rescue.

And even as a leader, you sometimes need to hold off on immediately stepping in to solve everything.

Instead, ask:

"What do you think the solution is?"

"How would you solve it?"

"What options do you see?"

Over time, people gain more independence and more clarity.

And if you decide to build leadership through trust rather than control, do it gradually.

Take months.

Take a year if necessary.

Give people enough time to reach their potential if they have never had the opportunity before.

Of course, if you are the person on the receiving end and someone forces this transition on you, the situation becomes harder because then boundaries become important, as we discussed in previous articles.

Why Do People Grow When You Stop Over-Managing?

The natural consequence of reducing micromanagement is that people are often forced to grow.

But there are exceptions.

I once had an employee who demanded so much attention and reassurance that I was eventually forced to let her go.

Not because she was a bad employee.

Quite the opposite.

Before working with me, she had always lived and worked in environments where somebody constantly controlled her.

First, her mother.

The employer.

I spoke with both of them because I genuinely wanted to solve the situation.

And both told me essentially the same thing:

"That is simply how she is."

She struggled with functioning without control.

And this is important because the desire for control can come from the leader, but it can also come from the employee.

Ironically, she was one of the best legal professionals I ever worked with.

Extremely precise.

One of the best lawyers I have ever known.

But she had an enormous fear of making mistakes.

She was such a perfectionist that if I could write a constitutional complaint in two weeks, she could spend three months writing the same document.

During the final week, she barely slept.

She lived on coffee.

Nobody, not even God himself, could have pulled her away from the details.

Documents became twenty, thirty, or even forty pages long.

Everything because of perfectionism.

And I could not free her from that burden.

Eventually, she also started pulling me into that world.

And after some time, when I began resisting it, we reached a point where our paths simply had to separate.

I felt terrible about it because she truly was exceptional.

But sometimes situations simply do not have another outcome.

And that is another difficult reality of leadership.

Not everybody will successfully make the transition.

But most people, once they are forced to take ownership and responsibility, eventually grow far more than they ever expected.

Leadership is not about control

Leadership is not about controlling people until they become dependent on you.

It is about creating an environment where people gradually become capable of standing on their own.

Some people will grow quickly.

Some slowly.

And some may never fully make the transition.

But if you consistently choose trust over fear and development over control, you will not only build stronger teams.

You will build stronger human beings, for you will help them grow and be better at themselves.